Sisters in the Mirror - by Elora Shehabuddin

About the Book

"Taking a transnational approach, this book challenges the belief that the Muslim world is unrelentingly antifeminist. The author challenges assumptions about inevitable civilizational antagonism between the "West" and the "Muslim world," a notion that has become increasingly popular in recent decades, and of a lag in the emergence of feminism in the latter. While it shouldn't be controversial to insist that male bias and privilege are present in Western as well as in Muslim-majority societies, it is more difficult to show how and why efforts to improve women's lives in even these geographically distant parts of the world have long been interconnected and interdependent. Sisters in the Mirror is a feminist story about how changing global and local power disparities-between Europeans and Bengalis, between Brahmos, Hindus, and Muslims within Bengal, between feminists of the global North and South, and between Western and Muslim feminists-have shaped ideas about change in women's lives and also the strategies by which to enact change. With the lasting shift in the balance of economic, political, and military power between Muslim and Euro-American nations toward the latter since the eighteenth century, Muslim advocates for women's rights have had to define their agendas for reform in the shadow of Western imperial and economic power. The stories in this book show that no society has a monopoly on ideas about justice and fairness (in the matter of women's or any other group's rights) or, for that matter, on male bias, violence, and injustice; no community is isolated or pure; and people everywhere are enriched by open-minded encounters with people who eat, dress, and pray differently, or don't pray at all"--

Book Synopsis

"A must read."--CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2022
"Holds up a mirror to the unifying, braided futures underlying so-called 'Western' and 'Muslim' feminism that are both undermined by the power of capital, the world trade order, and cynical geopolitics."--2023 Association for Asian Studies Coomaraswamy Book Prize

A crystal-clear account of the entangled history of Western and Muslim feminisms.

Western feminists, pundits, and policymakers tend to portray the Muslim world as the last and most difficult frontier of global feminism. Challenging this view, Elora Shehabuddin presents a unique and engaging history of feminism as a story of colonial and postcolonial interactions between Western and Muslim societies. Muslim women, like other women around the world, have been engaged in their own struggles for generations: as individuals and in groups that include but also extend beyond their religious identity and religious practices. The modern and globally enmeshed Muslim world they navigate has often been at the weaker end of disparities of wealth and power, of processes of colonization and policies of war, economic sanctions, and Western feminist outreach. Importantly, Muslims have long constructed their own ideas about women's and men's lives in the West, with implications for how they articulate their feminist dreams for their own societies.

Stretching from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment era to the War on Terror present, Sisters in the Mirror shows how changes in women's lives and feminist strategies have consistently reflected wider changes in national and global politics and economics. Muslim women, like non-Muslim women in various colonized societies and non-white and poor women in the West, have found themselves having to negotiate their demands for rights within other forms of struggle--for national independence or against occupation, racism, and economic inequality. Through stories of both well-known and relatively unknown figures, Shehabuddin recounts instances of conflict alongside those of empathy, collaboration, and solidarity across this extended period. Sisters in the Mirror is organized around stories of encounters between women and men from South Asia, Britain, and the United States that led them, as if they were looking in a mirror, to pause and reconsider norms in their own society, including cherished ideas about women's roles and rights. These intertwined stories confirm that nowhere, in either Western or Muslim societies, has material change in girls' and women's lives come easily or without protracted struggle.

From the Back Cover

"An exciting and original contribution to the global history of feminist thought. Through a focus on the two-way gaze and the interplay of ideas between Bengali and Anglo-American thinkers, Elora Shehabuddin makes a compelling case for the ways global feminism was shaped over time by East-West interactions in the form of mutual influences, reciprocal learning, and a fair amount of misapprehension. She enlarges our vision of feminism and its modern history by telling a hitherto neglected transregional story."--Judith E. Tucker, author of Women, Family, and Gender in Islamic Law

"Drawing on various historical texts and, importantly, writings by South Asian Muslim women and men, Shehabuddin traces a genealogy of representations by and about Muslim women. This is a long overdue, powerful, and necessary intervention in feminist history on gender, religion, and colonialism, and emphasizes why transnational feminist accounts must attend to the locations and contexts out of which differing and entangled representations emerge."--Inderpal Grewal, author of Saving the Security State: Exceptional Citizens in Twenty-First-Century America

"Shehabuddin provides an important analytical framework for understanding the intertwined experiences and political mobilizations of women across borders. A deeply researched and illuminating account of transnational feminist encounters, Sisters in the Mirror will undoubtedly raise our consciousness about seemingly disparate trajectories of social movements in various geopolitical contexts. This is a beautifully written book that centers diverse voices of women who are influencing national, regional, and global politics."--Elora Halim Chowdhury, author of Transnationalism Reversed: Women Organizing Against Gendered Violence in Bangladesh

"Shehabuddin compellingly explores the tangled story of feminist movements in the West and in Muslim South Asia and their secular expressions. Digging deep into history, Shehabuddin tells the stories of individual women's writings from the sixteenth century to the present and shows how the politics of colonialism, decolonization, and postcolonialism have shaped women's struggles for gender equality within their societies in Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, and the United States."--Yasmin Saikia, author of Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971

Review Quotes

"This foundational text marks a significant contribution to feminist debates and Muslim women's writing and is an incredible resource for students and researchers working in the field of global/transnational feminism and South Asian Muslim women. It provides a compact history of contemporary women's rights movements in the West and beyond."-- "Daily Star"

"This book shows how feminists in the West and in the Muslim world have built their ideas about women's roles and possibilities in a complicated dance with their sisters in the mirror. . . . . Shehabuddin's narrative offers a way for both sides to understand themselves and each other more clearly."-- "Journal of Asian Studies"

"Sisters in the Mirror is the most original and innovative. Hopefully its model will inspire other feminist historians in the ongoing challenge of writing about "the global history and politics of feminism"-- "Journal of Women's History"

"Using vignettes as the literary device of choice, Shehabuddin brings readers directly into the lives of these women, a rare treat in itself. She crafts a multi-angled history of feminism that includes women from two colonial countries and Bengali women from the Enlightenment to the present. Many readers of Indian or Pakistani history will be amazed at the quality of research and the connections uncovered in this text. . . . This is an extraordinary and exemplary use of vignettes to sustain women's voices over centuries and highlight interconnectedness, intimacy, and global awareness. . . . A must-read."

-- "Choice"

"Sisters in the Mirror breaks the pattern of using the anglophone feminist scholarship as the preamble for any work about gender studies. The choice of sources is bold and thought-provoking. Through the fluid narrative of the book, these isolated examples are knit together to highlight the challenges of Islamophobia today and its historical roots."-- "Gender, Place and Culture"

"This book offers a rich and interesting discussion of the impact of Western feminism on Muslim women. . . .The most important contribution of this book is that it reminds us that the most effective struggle for a more just world can be through struggles arising from solidarity, understanding and knowledge sharing."-- "Ethnic and Racial Studies"

"Sisters in the Mirror provides us with a new way to read and interpret the centuries-old Western-Muslim binary that has been historically constructed, fiercely debated and politically used in favour of colonialism and imperialism."-- "South Asian History and Culture"

About the Author

Elora Shehabuddin is Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Global Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of Reshaping the Holy: Democracy, Development, and Muslim Women in Bangladesh, coeditor of Gender and Economics in Muslim Communities, and associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures.